WILSON AUDIO ANNOUNCES SASHA DAW LOUDSPEAKERS

7th November, 2018

While keeping an eye on the past, Wilson Audio’s new Sasha DAW speaker also marks a new direction for this US high-end speaker brand.

The Sasha DAW commemorates the passing of David Andrew Wilson (DAW) who was the brand’s founder and guiding light for what seems like decades and decades.

But it also signals a changing of the guard at Wilson Audio primarily because the Sasha DAW is not a simple update of the Sasha speaker but a complete reworking of this formidable model.

And a speaker that most significantly has been designed from the ground up by Dave Wilson’s son and the brand’s current CEO, Daryl Wilson.

The younger Wilson is no speaker design neophyte. He points out that he was working alongside his father since he was a child.

The Sasha DAW bears all the hallmarks of that long apprenticeship and signals that Wilson Audio is in the best of hands.

Daryl Wilson began the design of the DAW in January 2018, a process that was delayed by the illness and death of his father in May that year.

He pressed on determined to look at every part of the Sasha and improve it.

To understand this momentous challenge one has to step back in time and see the DAW as the culmination of Dave Wilson’s most famous speaker called the Watt/Puppy.

It was the model that put Wilson Audio on the world stage. And it was also the model that created the high-end loudspeaker category we have today.

The Watt/Puppy would later morph into the Sasha, and what would become Wilson’s most popular speaker - one of the most copied designs by other manufacturers.

More recently and with the design of the Alexia Series 2 under his belt, Daryl Wilson turned his attention on the Sasha DAW.

He aimed high.

He gave the Sasha DAW a lot of the technology developed for the flagship WAMM model, paying particular attention to the time domain.

The DAW also gets the same midrange and tweeter used in the WAMM.

The DAW has a new 8-inch woofer modelled on the one carried by the Alexia Series 2, and the woofer enclosure now has six sides for extra rigidity compared to the five-sided cabinet used by the Sasha Series 2.

This new enclosure also received better bracing and a lining made of Wilson X-Material that increases its overall thickness.

The DAW’s woofer enclosure has 13.3 per cent more volume than the Sasha 2. This was achieved by removing the chamber at the rear of the woofer cabinet.

One visible improvement can be spotted at the front of the woofer’s baffle. This has been tilted back 3 degrees and is said to make for a more seamless blend between the woofer cabinet and the midrange enclosure.

The DAW gets new spikes initially developed for the Alexx model.

Cosmetic changes abound. But the nicest touch is the inclusion of a glass cover that exposes the resistors at the rear of the cabinet. The wings on each side of the top of the woofer cabinet are also very stylish in an understated way.

The change that every Sasha owner wishes they could have involves the DAW’s alignment block that lowers or raises the satellite speaker perched on the woofer cabinet.

On the Sasham, changing this height means removing and inserting spikes of different lengths. This alignment can now be done by hand.

Finally, the Sasha DAW gets a new tweeter and new midrange drivers which are said to offer a more linear response.

The Sasha DAW will be available early 2019 and are expected to sell in Australia for $63,995 RRP in standard colours.

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Written by:

One of the veterans of the Australian HiFi industry, Peter was formerly the Audio-Video Editor of the Herald Sun for over two decades. One of the most-respected audio journalists in Australia, Peter brings his unparalleled experience and a unique story-telling ability to StereoNET.

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